Blackwater was CIA's extension, founder Erik Prince admits

A picture taken on July 5, 2005 shows contractors of the US private security firm Blackwater securing the site of a roadside bomb attack near the Iranian embassy in central Baghdad. (AFP Photo / Ahmad Al-Rubaye) / AFP

Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater - now known as Academi - claims his firm “became a virtual extension of the CIA,” taking orders from the agency.

In an interview
published Thursday by the Daily Beast, Prince revealed how deeply
connected Blackwater was to the Central Intelligence Agency,
especially in the early 2000s. Last month, federal prosecutors
dropped felony charges against Blackwater personnel after it was
revealed that the employees had been acting under the orders of the
US government. After a three-year-long prosecution, most of the
company’s executives walked free and two men received nothing more
than probation, house arrest and $5,000 fines.

But the tens of thousands of pages of court documents from the
case shed light on an argument the company made throughout those
three years – that Blackwater itself was an extension of the
CIA.

“Blackwater’s work with the CIA began when we provided
specialized instructors and facilities that the Agency lacked,”
Prince told the Daily Beast.“In the years that followed, the
company became a virtual extension of the CIA because we were asked
time and again to carry out dangerous missions, which the agency
either could not or would not do in-house.”

Initially, lawmakers believed the CIA was “looking for skills
and capabilities, and they had to go to outside contractors like
Blackwater to make sure they could accomplish their mission,”
said retired Congressman Pete Hoekstra. But the relationship was in
fact much closer than believed.

When King Abdullah of Jordan visited the US in 2005, he took a
trip to the Blackwater headquarters in Moyock, North Carolina,
where company executives awarded him two gifts – a modified
Bushmaster AR-15 rifle and a Remington shotgun. The weapons were
labeled with the Blackwater logo, but Prince says that the CIA
asked the company to give Abdullah the guns “when people at the
agency had forgotten to get gifts for him.”

In a 2008 raid of the Blackwater headquarters, the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discovered that the
weapons given to Abdullah had been registered as personal property
by two employees at the agency – and there was no paperwork
indicating that they were now in the possession of Jordanian
royalty.

Additionally, the ATF found that many of Blackwater’s weapons
had been purchased illegally. Some of these weapons, which included
Romanian AK-47s and 17 Bushmaster AR-13s, had illegally had their
barrels shortened and been exported to other countries in violation
of federal gun laws.

Blackwater argued that in all of these instances, it had been
working on behalf of the CIA. Court documents include depositions
from CIA executives testifying that Blackwater provided weapons and
training for them. One court document even lists “Erik P” as a CIA
officer himself.

“The CIA routinely used Blackwater in missions throughout the
world,” one document reads. “These efforts were made under
written and unwritten contracts and through informal requests. On
many occasions the CIA paid Blackwater nothing for its assistance.
Blackwater also employed CIA officers and agents, and provided
cover to CIA agents and officers operating in covert and
clandestine assignments. In many respects, Blackwater, or at least
portions of Blackwater, was an extension of the CIA.”

Prince told the Daily Beast that he agreed to provide the CIA
with free services out of “patriotic duty”. And even though
he sold Blackwater, now known as Academi, for $200 million, he
continues to hold a grudge against prosecutors for going after the
company.

“Blackwater carried out countless life-threatening missions
for the CIA,” he said. “And in return, the government chose
to prosecute my people for doing exactly what was asked of
them.”